Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

You can register for a free account to have four complimentary articles per month. We will occasionally email you a newsletter, from which you can unsubscribe at any time. We do not sell personal data or otherwise disclose personal information to other organisations.

Books

Poincaré’s Prize by George G. Szpiro

David Dillard-Wright is philosophical about mathematics.

The mere mention of mathematics leads many people to roll their eyes and drift off to sleep. The idea that a history of mathematics could be, of all things, a fun read, might sound like a contradiction in terms. Oddly enough, George G. Szpiro has accomplished exactly that in Poincaré’s Prize: The Hundred Year Quest to Solve One of Math’s Greatest Puzzles. Leibniz said that “Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

…